Nashville, Durham, Raleigh Top List of Best Cities for Job Seekers in 2017

To identify the best places for job seekers in 2017, NerdWallet analyzed federal data for the 100 largest U.S. cities to determine where Americans will find opportunities and also where their paychecks will go further.

We factored in each place’s October 2016 unemployment rate from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as the increase in the working-age population from 2010 to 2015 with U.S. Census Bureau data. These two metrics, which represent the health of a city’s job market, were given the most weight in our analysis. Our methodology also includes census data for median earnings and median monthly rent in each city to provide a gauge of cost of living.

The top 10 cities for job seekers

Austin, Texas, claimed the No. 1 spot in our analysis, followed by Denver; Nashville, Tennessee; Seattle; and Durham, North Carolina. Atlanta; Minneapolis; Lincoln, Nebraska; Irving, Texas; and Raleigh, North Carolina, round out the top 10.